WHEATLAND – John and Suzanne Rocha have not only donated their time and efforts, but their building, the Angel Center for local food distribution in Wheatland. As they look to retire from the endeavor, they are looking for someone else to step up in the community to keep this venture growing and prosperous.

At 5 a.m. once a month at the Angel Center in Wheatland, a flurry of activity, volunteers and tons of food are distributed, boxed and transported to waiting cars. Although the distribution has to wait on volunteers to create the boxes, cars start to line up at 6 a.m. in anticipation of the food boxes to come.

Before COVID, the food was set out on tables, but during the COVID restrictions and continuing now, volunteers personally take boxes of food out to people waiting in their cars. Through the snow, over the ice, blown by wind and chilled by subzero temperatures, the faithful volunteers move quickly and efficiently.

“We do commodities out of here,” Rocha said as he pointed out a commercial freezer and refrigerator that are on site. “Everything is free for the not so fortunate this is the place where we get the food from Wyoming Food Bank, create boxes for people and then provide a pick-up location for them. It’s like a food pantry.”

The Wyoming Food Bank truck comes in once a month filled with food. The volunteers at Rocha’s location unload the truck, separate the food and fill the boxes for those receiving the food and then cleanup and store anything extra after all the over 550 “in need” people are taken care of with 200 boxes distributed. It comes to between one and two tons of food each month.

“People line up on the streets and the VFW acts as traffic monitors,” Rocha said. “What we do after all the boxes are created is have our volunteers go out and deliver the boxes to the people waiting in their cars.”

Rain or snow, cold or extreme heat the faithful volunteers are on the scene with smiles on their faces and generosity in their hearts.

“This is not my business, but it’s the community’s business,” Rocha said. “We do this for our community as provided by the Wyoming Food Bank. We get the food for almost nothing, and what we do pay for, we use grant money to purchase the food.”

The Rochas have been donating time, equipment and their building space for five years and they feel a need to move on. That will leave this program without a place for the Wyoming Food Bank truck to unload and there will be a need for someone to step up from the community and not only run the program, but will be able to secure a place for offloading food, storage and distribution.

“Hopefully somebody will pick it up,” Rocha said. “Wyoming Food Bank has gone through some changes, we are getting older and it’s time for a change for us and for Wheatland.”

The food offloaded from the truck comes on pallets. The Wheatland group has an efficient way of stacking pallets, filling tables and then making sure every box has the same amount of food.

“We have a lot of volunteers,” Rocha said. “Very good volunteers, dedicated… and we make the boxes brought to us by one of our volunteers, Jerry Miles. He procures the boxes from the stores. We fill the boxes with a lot of food, everything from chips to nuts to canned goods, perishable and nonperishables.”

This is a first come, first serve distribution and according to Rocha who arrives early, he says some people get there before he does to wait in their cars.

One of the organizers who has been running the program for over six years is Cindy Kahler. The actual name of the conglomerate contracted by Wyoming Food Bank is Platte County Commodities.

“We contract and do it a little different than some food pantries,” Kahler said. “Some places get their food from Casper and it comes pre-boxed and they distribute it. We don’t do it quite that way. We do it through grants and the Food Bank and we put the whole thing together ourselves. We’re not a food pantry, (so although there are no income requirements), we do ask them to fill out a form that requires them to give information as to how many people are in their house. That goes on to a computer program with the Rocky Mountain Food Bank. However, civil rights does not allow us to deny anyone food. T-fab is federal surplus and the only thing that is required to show is proof of income. The rest of it is not.”

The current group running the operation is most likely all going to retire at once. If nobody steps up to take over this program, there will be over 500 people who have come to depend on this monthly help that will no longer receive it.

“What we need is somebody to come in and take it over,” Kahler said. “We need somebody to come in who has a little bit of storage room, and can put together volunteers or use some of our volunteers and make it happen.”

Kahler hopes, by spring, someone will come forward as spring is pretty much the cutoff time for those who are wanting to retire from the organization. She says that although it can be time consuming, it’s good for the community and that is the reason they decided to serve here in Wheatland.

“I have 30 great and wonderful volunteers,” Kahler said. “They are all here, the VFW handles traffic control, I have just… great people and I couldn’t do it without them. I think these volunteers would probably step up and go with whoever takes over.”

The group doesn’t know when exactly this food program started, but former pastor of First Baptist Church in Wheatland Marlin Driskell says he remembers members of his church traveling to Denver to the food bank of the Rockies to pick up food.

“That would have probably been 30 years ago,” Driskell said. “We would pick up trailer loads of food, bring it up here and distribute from the church. When the Food Bank of the Rockies decided they didn’t want to service anyone out of Colorado, it kind of stopped. Then over the next five to seven years, the Food Bank of the Rockies in Wyoming finally got started. Though the commodities were different, they ran for years out of different locations.”